It's All True, I Swear By My Tattoo
On the afternoon of 10/09/98, between the hours of 5:00pm and 5:30pm
(for the sake of averages, the time has been officially cited as 5:15pm, although in my
personal estimation I think it was far closer to 5:20pm or possibly as early
as 5:17pm) I walked into the men's room of the second floor Jefferson building
with the intent to use the urinal. When I got to the urinal, I discovered
attached to it and to the wall immediately above it a device, electronic in
nature, which I immediately recognized as something that could have possibly
been a bomb. Contemplating whether or not the device in question could
possibly harm me, I stood in front of the urinal for about a minute, carefully
noting the mechanics of the object, trying to determine if had the potential
to be dangerous.
The object consisted of two parts. The first part was a cylinder with
an open end which had been slid into place on the handle used to flush the
urinal. Duct tape had been liberally and sloppily applied to the cylinder to
hold it on the flush handle. The cylinder was comprised of a plastic frame
around which tightly woven fine copper wire had been wrapped. Two insulated
wires (one red, one blue) ran from this object to a second object which had
been liberally and sloppily duct-taped to the wall immediately above and to
the left of the urinal. This device looked like an archaic circuit board.
The entire mechanism had the startling appearance of things one would find if
one performed surgery on a standard speaker system, say for example the type
found in a college student's dormitory.
After finishing my initial inspection I decided to notify the proper
authorities. At this time I walked over to my R.A.'s room and found him not
there. So I went looking for a friend of mine who lived on the building. He
was not in, but his roommate was. Because I did not know if his roommate
would panic at the sight of this thing, I did not alert him to it's presence.
My reconnaissance done, I walked back into the men's room to once again look
at the device.
For my second inspection I scanned the mechanism for anything that I
thought a real bomb might have. I have extensive training for this sort of matter, as
I have seen every single episode of "MacGyver" (some more than once). Also, a
few summers ago somebody found a pipe bomb near where I was working (although
I guess that doesn't count, because I held the pipe bomb in my hands and said,
"this is not a bomb," to the people who found it. It later turned out to
indeed be a bomb, which scared the bejeezus out of me). I thus looked for an
explosive charge and found none (nothing that looked like C-4 or Semtex, which of course I would recognize immediately), no timing device, no detonator, and no power source. I combined these observations with the fact that the "bomb" had been messily attached to
a urinal (it's not like I found it underneath the sink or something).
Thinking further, I realized that other people had probably seen this thing
and not done anything about it (which later proved to be a correct
assumption). Weighing carefully all of this evidence, I then factored in that
I had a call at the theater to work crew for a show in less than 45 minutes
and I still needed to eat dinner, and I certainly didn't have time to deal
with police reports or evacuating the building safely or other such nonsense.
It was at this time, and only at this time (after I had carefully assessed the
situation) that I decided that I was "pretty sure" the object in question was
not a bomb (you can quote me on that).
Having made the decision that the thing probably wasn't dangerous, I
proceeded to rip it off the wall and crush it under my foot. Certain
components did not respond well to this treatment. Other components were
unaffected- these I picked up and tore apart using my hands. After I finished
actively destroying the mechanism I dropped into the trash can and, to make
sure no-one else found it and panicked- covered it up with toilet paper. At
this point I proceeded to use the urinal.
I notified my Residential Administrator when I saw him at dinner
approximately ten minutes after the events described above. He said he'd
"look into it." At this time neither he nor I was aware of the fact that a
second device almost exactly the same to the first was in the other 2nd floor
bathroom (on the Colt side of the building). As an aside, the discovery of
that second device led to the notification of the police and the evacuation of
the building for four hours, during which time a bomb squad armed with flak
jackets, the real MacGyver, and explosives-sniffing dogs searched the
building. They found no explosives but did manage to discover several stashes
of illegal narcotics, leading to many arrests. The person responsible for
planting the false devices was arrested and will be facing charges.
[The investigating officer now wanted to do a little Q and A with the sergeant and me]
Q. What did the bomb look like to you?
Q. Do you think anyone else would have thought it was a bomb?
Q. Will you ever be so stupid as to take your life, the lives of everyone in
your dorm, and the dormitory building itself in your hands again by pretending
you are an expert on everything?
A. The "bomb" looked like stereo components to me.
A. Obviously, because whoever found the second one called you guys right
away.
A. No. I have learned my lesson. In the future, when confronted with a
device of suspicious origins and intent, I will immediately contact the local
authorities and run like a bat out of hell.
Send responses to The Captain